Police officers cleared in Garfield teen's fatal shooting [video]

A 19-year-old Garfield man was charging at two police officers with a claw hammer and a metal handsaw with a 16-inch blade when he was shot to death last December, authorities said on Wednesday.

The description of the shooting, provided in a statement by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, was part of the first detailed account of the events leading up to the death of Malik Williams. The shooting incited months of protest from local activists and the man’s family.

The four-page report was released hours after a grand jury determined there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Garfield Police Sgt. Jose A. Brito and Bergen County Police Officer Kenneth Keenan in connection with Williams’ death.

“I am satisfied that this investigation was conducted completely, thoroughly and fairly,” Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said in the document. The chiefs of the Bergen County and Garfield Police departments also released statements on Wednesday saying their officers had acted appropriately.

But activists and Williams’ family members, who have compared the incident to the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida, disputed the account. They said they would continue to press their case with federal officials and in the civil court.

“You just don’t kill nobody’s child and think you can get away with it,” said Williams’ mother, Shirley. “He was not a violent kid.”

Shirley Williams said no one from the Prosecutor’s Office had contacted her about the grand jury decision. She learned of it from a reporter from The Record, she said.

“Oh, my God, this is ridiculous. I’m really mad,” she said when told of the decision. “No, that’s not right. No, no, no. This is not right. No. How are they going to be cleared of killing my son?”

Williams was among a group of 15 to 20 protesters who responded to the grand jury decision with a short march on the Bergen County Administration Building in Hackensack on Wednesday afternoon. They confronted Molinelli during an unrelated public meeting. Molinelli said, “Not now,” and walked out of the room.

Fled from custody

Williams had turned himself in to Garfield police on Dec. 10 on an aggravated-assault warrant issued against him after an incident the previous day involving his girlfriend, Jasmine Rivera, the mother of his infant son. He was served with criminal complaints and, while being processed, ran from a booking room and out of the station.

Apart from a brief news release after the shooting, the only details regarding it have come from reports filed by the officers involved — and obtained after The Record sued for access — which said Williams used a blunt object and some kind of knife or cutting object in a threatening or attacking manner, and that the officers fired at him several times. He was pronounced dead that evening.

Wednesday’s statement from the prosecutor describes Williams as “calm and cooperative,” during his hours at the police station, a two-hour stay that was captured by surveillance cameras. The video recording shows he was not mistreated, the document states.

Williams was searched and fingerprinted. He talked to his mother via a recorded telephone conversation and told the officers that he would not be able to post his $10,000 bail, the statement said. They told him he would be transported to the Bergen County Jail and left him uncuffed while they dealt with computer problems.

While the officers had their backs turned, Williams “bolted,” the report states.

He ran down a flight of stairs, out two separate doors and across the parking lot, with the three officers from the processing room in pursuit.

He ran along railroad tracks near Dahnerts Lake Park and a plastics factory, then he found the unlocked side door of a residential garage at 22 Dahnert Park Lane. Williams went inside and barricaded the door with three air conditioning units and a drill press, the report states.

The report does not say when the three officers from the processing room lost sight of Williams. Keenan, a canine officer, was dispatched with a police dog, to help the Garfield Police search for him, it says.

Keenan met Brito at the police station and the two officers went to the park together, where they were briefed by an off-duty Garfield Police officer, the report stated.

After a short search, Keenan went to the side door of the garage. He could open the door only enough for his dog to stick its nose inside and signal that it had detected a human scent, the report stated.

Keenan then entered the garage from the bay door. He had taken a few steps inside, with Brito diagonally behind him, when Williams emerged from behind a pile of materials, wielding the tools, the report stated.

Both officers repeatedly ordered Williams to drop the tools, but he advanced at them, cursed them and held the tools in “a threatening manner,” the report states.

Keenan backed out of the garage and did not draw his gun until Williams was within 10 feet of him, the report states.

The document also enumerates four reasons why Keenan could not deploy his dog: patrol dogs are not trained to attack armed subjects; it was on a standard police canine leash that does not allow for the dog to be quickly released; releasing the dog would have required him to reholster his weapon; and there was a possibility that the dog would have attacked Brito, “thus exacerbating an already dangerous situation.”

Nine shots fired

Keenan fired when Williams was about 7 to 8 feet away from him, the report states. His shots were followed by Brito’s. Williams “eventually fell to the ground.”

A total of nine shots were fired, five from Keenan’s weapon and four from Brito’s.

Williams was hit five times in the chest, abdomen, right thigh, right wrist and the back of his left hand, the report says. The sequence of his wounds could not be determined.

The medical examiner also found a rock in Williams’ pants pocket that matched those in the bedding of the train tracks near Dahnert Park Lane, evidence, the report states, that he had “armed himself,” after fleeing the police station.

The report also states that the evidence shows that Williams was fired on from the front of his body, which contradicts statements made by Victor Urbaez, the Williams family’s attorney, that said there appeared to be two bullet holes in the back of the body with no apparent entry or exit wounds to the front. That report was disputed by Molinelli at the time.

Brito and Keenan have each served as police officers about 12 years.

Bergen County Police Chief Brian Higgins said in a statement that the grand jury’s findings mirrored those of an internal review in his department.

“Although the use of force was justified, it is nonetheless regrettable that these officers were forced to take such action to protect their own lives and preserve public safety,” he said.

He said he did not know when Keenan would return to work.

His comments were echoed by Keenan’s attorney, Jay Fahy, and in a separate statement released by Garfield Chief Kevin Amos.

“This tragic incident has affected many lives including the family of Malik Williams, the Garfield Police Department and the community,” Amos’ statement said.

Charles Sciarra, Brito’s lawyer, said the grand jury’s decision should clear his client of any civil liability in connection with the incident. Brito is looking forward to returning to work.

“He has been lied about, slandered,” Sciarra said. “People with no information and no knowledge of anything have accused him of all kinds of horrendous lies. People shamefully trying to profiteer from this unfortunate event, brought on solely by the suspect, should be ashamed of themselves. … He is a good cop, and he’ll continue to be a good cop.”

State attorney general guidelines allow police officers to use deadly force if they can reasonably believe such action is immediately necessary to protect themselves or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm.

Several law enforcement experts polled on Wednesday said the prosecutor’s account seemed to describe a situation that would fit that description.

Police officers are trained to treat any sharp or blunt object as a deadly weapon if it is drawn within 21 feet of them — a guideline that has been revised to 30 feet by some standards, said Thomas Aveni, executive director of the Police Policy Studies Council in New Hampshire, a consulting and research group. “If they shot him at a distance of 7 feet while he’s still moving forward, then we have a shooting that is reasonable by virtually every standard,” said Aveni, who is also a former police officer in Camden County. “They don’t have to wait until this guy literally is close enough to cut them or bludgeon them.”

Williams’ family members, however, questioned why police could not have taken another tactic to subdue him.